


Time Marches On

by MintChocolateLeaves



Series: KaiShin Oneshots [2]
Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Angel!Kaito, Angst, M/M, Wings!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 07:09:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13382748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintChocolateLeaves/pseuds/MintChocolateLeaves
Summary: “Goddammit Kaito, you weren’t really a phantom, why are you haunting me like this?”Maybe because he really was haunting Shinichi, trying to make sure the man coped in the wake of his death. Kaito can't really do much, but in a way, he becomes Shinichi's guardian angel.





	Time Marches On

The thing about Icarus was that he really believed he could maintain the ‘balance’ when he got his wings. He believed in every wax feather, every beat of his manmade creation that he could survive with the unnatural.

Icarus died when he got wings.

Kaito had to die to get them.

He’s still a little confused on the _particulars_ of his situation. There’s not much he can remember about his own death, too many memories blocked in a haze of pain and disillusion. The last moment he remembers is finding Pandora, seeking to destroy it.

Turns out destroying something immortal takes away a person’s mortality after all. Because somewhere after that, Kaito had woken up in a melancholic world where the only one’s capable of seeing him were the dying.

He’d also woken up with wings, extra limbs, that he hasn’t the faintest clue of how to navigate. Which is almost a little disheartening because as KID, he’d spent a lot of time flying, it’d be nice if he could continue to do so.

So, he’s… some sort of angel now. Kaito sees the irony, he’s had the laughs. It’d be a lot funnier, if he wasn’t, _you know,_ dead.

There had been a funeral for him, Kaito knows there must have been. He’d woken up shivering, wings folded over his body, beside a tombstone with his name scrawled across it. _Beloved son,_ had been placed next to _Beloved father,_ and Kaito hadn’t know whether to cry or curse.

_(Later he’d noticed dirt beneath his fingernails, and Kaito had realised that he must have dug his way out, clawed his way out from the casket he’d been buried in.)_

Nature remains the same for him – the breeze is chilling against his body, the grass prickly against his bare feet – so clawing his way out was really the only option. If he thinks about it properly that is. Kaito’s not really that sure _why,_ but with so much time to simply _think,_ he’s decided that it’s probably because nature doesn’t look away from death in the same way Humanity does.

Humans, Kaito summarises, cannot see him in the way nature can, because they’re constantly avoiding the stare of death.

It’s quite… sad… now that Kaito can take a step back and simply see.

“Well…” he mutters to himself, glancing around, “what is there left for me now?”

Animals can see him, yes, but he can’t spend all his time surrounded by animals. He needs to hear some sort of conversation, find someone else in the same situation – even if that means finding someone who’s… someone who’s willing to stare death in the eye.

He starts with hospitals. There are always deaths, always people willing to talk to an angel who might guide them towards the end more easily – their words, not his. Many of them tell him stories, families believing they’re delusional even though for the first time, these people can truly _see._

“I lost my wife,” one older man whispers now, “a few years ago. She was murdered… I can’t wait to see her again. Will you make sure I find her again?”

Like with all the other people who have viewed him as a guardian angel in the past, Kaito feels unable to deny them. He doesn’t know what happens to those who die, but they never join him in this… _nothingness_.

Instead of arguing, he nods.

“Tell me about your wife,” Kaito whispers, “so I know who to point you towards.”

He’s told about a marriage, the kind of marriage Kaito had once wanted with… He shakes his head, keeps listening. And then, there’s a mention of a name that makes his stomach drop, heart aching in his chest.

“She was murdered, but we’d have never known the truth about how without that police investigator Kudo Shinichi.”

Kaito tries not wince, does so anyway, and finds that he has to look away. The thought of Shinichi, the smiles they’d once shared brings him more pain. And to think he’d been trying so hard to avoid thinking of the man he’d wanted to spend an eternity with.

“That name,” the patient across from him whispers, “you find it hard to hear?”

Kaito turns to look him in the eye, offers the rawest resemblance of a smile at the words. The truth hardly seems appropriate – how can he say they’d been engaged, preparing to marry without receiving some sort of _pity? –_ so he decides to lie.

“I’m his guardian angel,” Kaito says, “and I’ve just… there’s so much to save him from, that sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough.”

All of the things Kaito had done to keep Shinichi safe. The dramatic spectacle of KID vs Conan, it all feels redundant now. Kaito is gone, and Shinichi is without him and nothing will ever even the guilt Kaito feels about have left Shinichi behind.

“If you’re his guardian angel,” the other whispers, “then why are you listening to me whiter on?”

Kaito offers him a smile, “Shinichi is the type who’d feel selfish if I spent all my time watching over him.”

* * *

He finally finds the courage to seek Shinichi out, months after his death. Or rather – months after he’d clawed his way through dirt, because he’d been dead for at least a year before then.

_(Time is rather inconsistent for him now, sometimes a month feels like a day. Other times a day seems like eternity.)_

There’s a silence to Shinichi that Kaito doesn’t remember. It’s overwhelming, like a black fog buffering around him, incapable of being broken through. It’s brings a shiver to Kaito, as he follows behind the detective.

He’s thrown himself into his case work. Kaito can see as much from the bags under his cheeks, the pale sheen to his skin. He’s _exhausted,_ and Kaito knows that there’s nothing he can do to help.

Nothing but to be there, invisible to the eye, waiting beside Shinichi until the other man heals. There’s a break in Shinichi’s spirit, and all Kaito can do is stay by his side, watching until it pieces back together.

“Another murder…?” Shinichi mutters, as he passes police tape. Kaito ducks beneath it, wings snagging on the tap in a way that makes people assume there’s been a gust of wind. “What was the cause of death on this one?”

“Stab wound to the abdomen,” Hattori, his detective partner, mumbles, “so far it looks like a typical muggin’. Not every murder is as intricate as th’ one’s we used t’ solve.”

“Let’s take a look,” Shinichi says, following behind the Osakan, with a lack of energy and an almost inaudible sigh that ends up rattling against Kaito’s ear drums. “Hopefully we can get the murderer caught before anyone else becomes their victim.”

The crime scene is ghastly. It’s not particularly _bad,_ not for a murder at least, but it is the loss of life and to Kaito it’s nothing short of nightmare inducing. He’s sure his dreams would be plagued by the sight alone, if he had a need for sleep. Maybe he’s lucky in that regard.

“Oh,” Shinichi says, gaze whizzing across the scene. He kneels beside the body, gets a look at the stab wound – and any other wounds on the body, before looking up. “So that’s how it must have happened.”

Kaito kneels beside him, lifts his wings up as if to block Shinichi from the wind, and tries to see things as the other man does. It’s difficult – he can’t play the scene out in his head well enough, not even seeing the lacerations and slashes on the victim’s body.

It’s something he had both admired and hated about Shinichi. His ability to wrap his mind around people’s dying moments.

“He saw the knife before the stabbing,” Shinichi says now, standing up. “See the cuts on his hand, he tried to get the knife before he was murdered. He wasn’t scared – my guess is he knew the attacker.”

Hattori leans down again, glances at the wounds. He nods his head, “yeah. I can see where ya coming from. We should start lookin’ at his acquaintances an’ work from there.”

And like that, they’ve made leeway on another case. There’s nothing Kaito can do to help him there, has to leave Shinichi to solve another meaningless murder, imprison another misguided criminal in need of rehabilitation.

“Why are you overworking yourself, Shinichi?” Kaito mutters as they walk off towards the police car. He’ll have to travel alongside it, _good thing he can fly,_ to get to the next person. “Why won’t you take a break?”

* * *

The next murder Kaito is present at, alongside Shinichi, is at the local supermarket, when Shinichi is off duty. Kaito would like it to be known that ‘off duty’ is surrounded by quote marks, because Shinichi doesn’t take breaks, _not anymore,_ and he’s skimming over case files on his phone while listlessly throwing groceries into his basket.

There’s a loud bang, a bullet whizzing through the air, and Kaito turns to see a man holding a gun, pointing towards the cashier. A robbery – something Kaito and Shinichi hadn’t noticed occurring because they’d been at the other end of the shop, Shinichi too engrossed in his case reports.

The detective glances up from his phone, rushes towards the robber. His own gun – police issued, meant to remain at the station when he clocks off-duty, but Shinichi won’t _stop working_ – is raised within the time it takes for the thief to notice him.

During this time, Kaito makes his way towards the dying man.

He’s bleeding, heavily, and it’s quite easy to see that he’s going to die. Kaito knows, because the man notices him with an almost heavy gasp, lets out a small moan of ‘a-angel’.

“You want to put pressure on the wound,” Kaito says, leaning down and helping the man lift his arm to the wound in his stomach, “it’ll keep the bleeding from being too intensive.”

“An angel’s here to take me away…?” The cashier mumbles, ashen. He’s squinting as if struggling to see straight – not that Kaito can blame him, it’s always dizzying, blood-loss.

“I’m not an angel,” Kaito says, “I’m just Kaito. So, don’t worry, you’ll make it through this.”

He wishes it were true, but there’s hope in the man’s eyes when he closes them, echoing Kaito’s own name.

When he looks up, Shinichi has apprehended the robber, has called for back-up, and has the man pinned to the counter. All of that, and yet he’s staring at the body wide eyed.

* * *

Later, Kaito realises why he was so wide-eyed.

“He said Kaito’s name, Hattori,” Shinichi mutters, when the two are in their patrol car. Hattori drives, probably because they both know Shinichi’s always going to be reckless with cars. “And it, it _threw me off._ I almost let go of my grip hearing his name, why can’t I just move on?”

Hattori is quiet beside him. He says, “you can’t move on because you don’t know what happened.”

“But I do know what happened,” Shinichi mutters, “he wasn’t murdered, he died of natural causes, I made the doctors look _repeatedly._ ”

A pause. And then, “I know, but ya also know it ain’t normal for a twenty-two-year-old to just drop dead o’ natural causes. Whatever the doctors said.”

Shinichi sighs. Shakes his head.

Kaito, sat in the back, wings crushed between the doors – _he’d dived into the car when Hattori had opened his door, found his way to the back –_ feels a twinge of regret. So that’s how he’d died: He’d broken Pandora, and in return, it had broken him.

* * *

It only gets worse from there.

Shinichi only gets worse.

It’s almost like hearing the man mutter Kaito’s name has rekindled an obsession, a need to know what happened. He attacks murder scenes with a rigid mindset – catch the criminals, find who did it – empathy draining from his voice at every approaching scene.

Shinichi becomes cold.

And it’s all Kaito’s fault.

The crime scenes become increasingly more worrying, not because it’s continued death – although it is alarming when some of them see Kaito in their last moments – but because Shinichi wraps himself up in them.

Shinichi throws himself so deeply into his work, that Kaito can see it visibly pains him. The detective gets to a point where he can feel each bullet tearing through his skin, can imagine with such accuracy the pain of every laceration.

Kaito gets the impression that Shinichi wants to feel that pain. Wants to feel the pain of dying so he can be a little closer to Kaito – or maybe, maybe so he doesn’t need to think of Kaito at all. If only for a little while.

It seems to work, for a while. One month rolls into two, until it’s been another six months with little change and guilt weighing too heavily on Kaito’s conscience. Nothing really changes until one of the children at the crime scene notices the angel standing beside the ‘scary’ police detective.

She’s small, roughly five years old – just old enough to want to know the answers to everything. Still young enough that she hasn’t averted her eyes from everything else – Kaito’s certain the girl’s only slightly older than Shinichi had been when he’d first met him as Conan.

Police reports say she’s the daughter of the victim, a young girl called Miu.

The police are trying to ask questions – she’d been the only one in the house when the murder had occurred over night – when Miu turns to Shinichi and points. She says, “why does that man have wings?”

The other detectives turn to Shinichi, offer raised eyebrows. Shinichi himself seems to be taken aback, dragged out of his bad mood for almost a moment.

He says, “I don’t have wings.”

Miu shakes her head, runs up to Kaito and points at him. She says, “no, not the detective, the one standing beside him.”

It’s at this time that Kaito gets the impression that the officers think she’s daydreaming, seeing things to cope with her mother’s death. It’s why he leans down to face her, lifting his wings just high enough that she can brush her hands beneath the bottom.

“The wings are pretty,” she whispers, and most of the detective’s have gone back to their work. All of them except Shinichi – maybe he remembers his own time as a child, how foolish it would be to overlook what they’re saying.

“Thank you,” Kaito mumbles, and smiles when he realises it’s not just the dying that can see him. Children have always been more finetuned to nature than adults, have always been more observant because everything is _new._ “I’ve become quite fond of them.”

Miu smiles. “Are you an angel? How long have you had wings? Do they feel like arms?”

So many questions. How many will he be able to answer before the police detectives decide Miu needs to be asked more questions, or taken from the house to stay with a relative.

“I’m not an angel,” Kaito responds, “and I’ve had them for about two years.”

“Are you this detective’s partner? Or his guardian angel?”

Kaito forces a smile, “I just stay by Shinichi’s side, to make sure he’s alright. I care an awful lot about him.”

“…Shinichi…?” Miu turns to the detective in question, and then back to Kaito, “so you love him then?”

* * *

Later, in the car, Hattori has to talk about how the child has probably seen his name in the newspaper and that’s how she knew his name.

Shinichi, rather understandably, is riled. He’s confused, and his hair is almost as messy as Kaito’s is, because he keeps pulling at the ends trying to figure everything out.

“I don’t understand,” Shinichi mutters, “she knew my name, and she knew that someone who loved me died two years ago. It makes no sense?”

Hattori shakes his head, seemingly as lost. “Children are strange sometimes, ya know that. It’s just a coincidence, Kudo.”

Shinichi bites into his lips and says, “there’s no such thing as coincidence, hasn’t our work taught us that?”

* * *

The change this time is even more drastic.

Shinichi had dived into his work after the cashier’s death. Now, following the conversation of Miu, he almost stops having a life outside of work altogether. Before, he’d had the skeleton of a social life – dinners with close friends or visiting parents.

Now, he turns the offers away.

Shinichi reads files on robberies and cold cases. And sometimes, during the darker parts of the evening, when insomnia keeps him awake, lingers into the hour of the dead, Shinichi pulls open a folded case file on something he’s never been able to fully solve.

Kaito’s smile is on one of the pages. Next to the photograph is a printed copy of his complete medical history, and after that: His history as KID.

The one case Shinichi cannot solve. The last case Kaito left him.

“Stop obsessing over me,” Kaito mutters one night, despite knowing that the other man can’t see him, “there’s no answer in these files for you. Please.”

Shinichi doesn’t move on.

If anything, he takes a step back.

“It’s like you’re haunting me,” Shinichi mutters one night, when it’s nearing four a.m, and he’s nursing a headache with peppermint tea. “Goddammit Kaito, you weren’t really a phantom, _why are you haunting me like this?”_

Kaito sighs.

“I don’t know,” he whispers.

* * *

“There’s something behind all this,” Shinichi says in the patrol car one night, sat next to Hattori. “I know there is, it wouldn’t make sense if there wasn’t something causing all of this _confusion_.”

“Kudo, it’s not some conspiracy. It’s just a–”

The sound of a gunshot pierces through their conversation. At once, adrenaline is rushing through Kaito’s body, even though he knows there’s no way he can be shot.

“Request for backup Hattori,” Shinichi says, opening his door. He’s out within seconds and Kaito dives out of the car after him, his feathers getting caught in the door.

There’s no way he can open the door, so Kaito pulls at his wings until feathers snag from his skin, a sharp shooting pain spreading across his back. Droplets of blood drip from the bottom of his wings, and Kaito forces himself not to whimper.

Hattori’s voice shouts out for backup and for Shinichi to wait, but of _course_ Shinichi doesn’t. He races forwards, hands reaching down to the gun holstered at his waist, arming himself.

It’s a murder. Point blank.

Kaito knows the look of killers, having been following Shinichi around for a while now. Having stood beside him during cases.

“Put your hands up!” Shinichi shouts, gun raised. The suddenness of his appearance must throw the man off, because he doesn’t put his hands up – he shoots instead.

Seconds later, there’s a flash from Shinichi’s gun, and Kaito watches as the man falls. Kaito’s just glad that Shinichi hasn’t–

“Kaito?”

The thief reels back at the sound of his name, and then, he balks. He says, “Shinichi? You were…?”

Shinichi glances down, follows Kaito’s gaze to the wet patch against his black coat. Blood pools against the fabric, and when Shinichi presses his hand against the coat, red stains it.

Shock rids his expression of any other feeling, and Kaito isn’t sure whether it’s the sight of him, or the fact that he’s bleeding out.

“It’s really you.” Shinichi says, and he’s wobbly on his feet. Kaito surges forwards, helps Shinichi down to his feet as best he can – he’s not _physically_ present, not able to hold him, but the psychological aspect helps Shinichi to sit down at least. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

“I know,” Kaito says. He’s never usually lacked words when it comes to speaking, especially not with Shinichi, but what is he supposed to say? ‘Sorry that I died?’ It’s not as _simple as that._

“But it’s not really you is it,” Shinichi mutters, turning his eyes away, “I’m just seeing you because of… _this.”_

He waves towards the blood. And then, in an attempt to grab the attention of anyone around him, he calls, entirely too weakly to be heard, for help. For Hattori to come save him.

There’s no way to convince him that it’s really him, so Kaito decides not to bother. Shinichi’s going to be glad either way to see him. Arguing at this point is just useless.

“You need to shout a little louder,” Kaito says, wrapping his wings around the man so the cold doesn’t seep into his bones. “If you don’t, no one will hear.”

Shinichi shakes his head, “why did you die, I don’t understand. Why did you leave me?”

“I’ve not left you,” Kaito says, and there’s a desperation in his voice now, his hands trembling with trepidation. “I’ve been with you this whole time, Shinichi, you just can’t _see me.”_

“You’re dead.”

The tone is blunt, almost venom-like with how angry it seems. Of course, Shinichi isn’t just sad about his death, but angry too. If he’d been murdered, if there had been any _signs_ then Shinichi could have found a way to understand. But he’s left the detective with one riddle that’s to complex to solve.

“I know.” A pause. “It’s because I found Pandora.”

Shinichi opens his mouth, falters on the words. Kaito takes it as a sign to keep going:

“Remember the stories of an immortal stone? What do you think happens to something when it loses it’s immortality?”

_“It dies.”_

Wide-eyed, Shinichi shudders the words into the silence. He’s always been able to solve KID’s riddles, even if he does sometimes require a small push. This realisation, it almost seems enough to make the other realise it’s really him.

(Either that, or Shinichi’s beginning to wish it’s Kaito. But really, isn’t that the same thing as believing?)

He calls for help now. Louder, a high enough voice that Kaito’s certain he can hear footsteps racing towards them both – Hattori’s footsteps.

“Kaito?” Shinichi mutters, “can I ask you for something?”

Kaito offers him a smile – the half-smile, half-smirk he’d reserved for only Shinichi – and says, “for you, anything.”

“Will you stay with me?” Shinichi doesn’t specify for how long, but Kaito knows he means until the very end. And God forbid, Kaito will find a way to make sure that the end is as far away as the end of time.

Somehow – somehow, he’ll make sure Shinichi lives for the both of them.

“How could I ever leave you,” Kaito says, resting his forehead against Shinichi’s, his hands entangles in Shinichi’s, “not even death could tear me away from you.”

He keeps his hands wrapped around Shinichi’s, even after Hattori arrives. Even after the paramedics arrive, placing Shinichi into one of the ambulances.

Kaito doesn’t let go until he’s certain he’s disappeared from Shinichi’s vision, and that the other man can’t see death anymore.

For now, it’s enough.


End file.
